1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a cutter assembly, particularly a food spiral cutting machine.
2. Background
Fruits and vegetables such as apples, potatoes, or carrots usually require some kind of processing before cooking or serving. These preparation processes include peeling, cutting, slicing, shredding, etc. At present the majority of food cutter assemblies used in the kitchen are hand-operated cutter assemblies.
Chinese patent application, publication number CN02214379.3, discloses a vegetable and fruit peeling machine, with its vertical fixed on the base frame, with a guide screw through the upper frame; the guide screw has a fork at one end and a handle fixed at the other end; a cutting knife is arranged at the end of the bracket. The vegetable and fruit peeling machine is operated by rotating the crank push screw, using the blades at the end of the rack to peel fruit on the fork. By using a hand driven lead screw, the manual process is inefficient and has a high manpower cost. The weaknesses of the fruit and vegetable peeler become more apparent when it is used to process large amounts of food.
In order to overcome these problems, people developed the electric cutter. Chinese patent CN201420273425.5 discloses an electric spiral cutting machine. The machine comprises: a base, a main frame fixed on the base, positioning rod pieces and electric drive pieces; a main frame set cutting tool; positioning rod pieces and main frame thread connection, where the positioning rod pieces can move relative to the main frame; the electric drive pieces are arranged at one end of the positioning rod pieces, and are used for driving the positioning rod pieces to rotate.
The electric spiral cutting machine can improve the efficiency of processing of fruits and vegetables. However, there exist the following problems:    (1) Electric drive pieces of an electric spiral cutting machine are arranged at the end of the positioning rod pieces to direct drive positioning rod pieces, their driving force is small, with a low working efficiency, and the unit is bulky.    (2) During working of the electric spiral cutting machine, the electric drive pieces need to be moved forward with the positioning rod pieces, the positioning rod pieces and the main frame are supported by a base only. Therefore, when fruits and vegetables that have been placed into the positioning rod pieces and the electric spiral cutting machine for cutting work, users need a hand or other device to make the electric spiral cutting machine stable. The electric spiral cutting machine has the problems of an unstable center of gravity, poor balance and complicated operation.    (3) The positioning rod pieces and main frame use a threaded connection. As a result, reverse rotation of the positioning rod pieces is required to return the main frame back to its original position in order to start another cutting cycle. This process takes time and is inconvenient.    (4) The main frame will shake when the positioning rod is forward relative to the main frame, the slicer is set up in the main frame, which easily causes a poor cutting effect of the electric cutter.    (5) The main frame limits the size of fruits and vegetables that can be processed. The poor stability of the whole structure means that the machine would not be good at processing large-sized fruits and vegetables.